When preserving and creating wealth for our clients, it’s essential to establish a personal connection. That is the only way the client will trust the advisor, and the advisor can understand the client’s needs. This is particularly true when it comes to financials. Van Lanschot Kempen is one of the world’s oldest financial institutions still existing. This Netherlands-based firm has the experience to know just how important the personal touch is in its business, which is why it always strives to give its employees time to build personal connections with colleagues and clients. Thanks to Copilot for Microsoft 365, Van Lanschot Kempen is reducing the time needed for daily tasks, freeing up time to invest in that crucial personal connection.
The challenge: Unautomated day-to-day tasks take up a lot of time
Financial security isn’t a one-size-fits-all affair. And as it’s such a personal and sensitive topic, you’re going to want to talk about it only with an advisor you can trust and who takes the time to advise you properly. “As a Wealth Manager, we want to serve our clients in as direct and personal a way as possible, and not just force them to take the first financial product that pops into our head,” says Bas Rapati, Chief Analytics Officer and Managing Director Digital and Advanced Analytics at Van Lanschot Kempen—one of the top 10 oldest financial institutions worldwide. “But of course, personal consulting takes time,” he explains. “And time is a scarce resource.”
Taking notes during meetings, manually searching through lengthy transcripts to find a specific action point, and creating new communications like emails in different languages for different people, but struggling to know how to start or phrase key messages: it seems like there’s no end to the number of time-consuming, unautomated tasks. “Not that those tasks don’t add value—of course they do,” explains Nerea Ramon Gomez, Specialist Advanced Analytics at Van Lanschot Kempen. “It’s just that they take up a lot of time, and you’re constantly asking yourself: Why am I doing this? Couldn’t we come up with a way of automating this?”
Such tasks make it harder to focus on colleagues and clients during meetings, and they compromise the personal depth of consulting services. But Van Lanschot Kempen consistently strives to maximize the personal aspect of its work. That’s why the company has always implemented the latest innovative technologies to make this possible. The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has opened up new opportunities for Van Lanschot Kempen investigating and implementing multiple Microsoft GenAI capabilities across their digital platforms: “When we heard about the Microsoft 365 Copilot early access program, we thought: ‘We want in’,” Rapati recalls. That wish was granted, and the company quickly identified a variety of use cases in which Copilot for Microsoft 365 would reduce the amount of time employees need to complete routine tasks.
The solution: Implementing Copilot as an assistant that takes over day-to-day tasks
For Van Lanschot Kempen, Copilot’s biggest advantage is its high level of integration into Microsoft 365. It’s not a separate solution but rather an integral part of working with Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams—solutions that every employee already uses on a daily basis. “Copilot is the first solution that eases the burden of day-to-day tasks, freeing up time to work on a more personal level but without being yet another complex tool,” Rapati explains. And because of this high level of integration, Van Lanschot Kempen quickly identified a variety of use cases in which Copilot offers a host of advantages.
The general benefit is that Copilot is very adept at learning based on interactions and data shared with it. That makes it possible for the tool to provide individual and precise assistance. “We have our own personal lingo, specific abbreviations that in a pre-Copilot world could get a bit confusing in transcripts or summaries,” Rapati says. “But Copilot learned that lingo and now perfectly understands what we’re talking about in meetings or chats.” That helps with prompting and getting the most out of the available data. Copilot understands roles and conversational context, which in Microsoft Teams meetings in particular is an absolute game-changer. “In a meeting, I told everyone that a new colleague would be joining Van Lanschot Kempen,” he says, and Copilot used that information to create a remarkable action point: everyone who was on that call was given the task of introducing their teams to the new colleague, without my needing to give that directive.”
And those learning capabilities are the basis for far more benefits that enhance personal focus at Van Lanschot Kempen even more. On an operational level, Copilot saves a lot of time with regard to meetings. “Sitting in meetings and having to take notes and structure action points, tasks, and recaps accounted for around 40 percent of my time. Plus, during meetings, I was often focused more on taking notes than on interacting with my colleagues,” says Johanna Albert, Digital Adoption Specialist at Van Lanschot Kempen. “Copilot is now my assistant during and after meetings. During the meeting, I can ask it about topics we still need to discuss and direct the meeting accordingly. And afterward, Copilot can not only give me a summary, it can also structure action points and tell me who they’ve been assigned to.” Summaries can easily be used in Outlook: Copilot uses them to draft an email that then goes out to the key stakeholders. “That saves us a lot of time—time we can then spend on our more personal jobs that can’t be automated,” Albert says.
Copilot also helps Van Lanschot Kempen employees prepare emails and documents. Nerea Ramon Gomez explains: “Copilot is a brilliant assistant when drafting emails or documents. We tell it what we want in terms of subject line, introduction, and structure, and that’s what we get—all with a simple click.” This provides an important head start that both speeds up the whole process and enhances the quality of emails and other documents. “What’s more, our clients are quite international, and so are we,” Ramon Gomez says with a smile. “For instance, my first language is Spanish. So, when I draft emails or documents, say, in English, Copilot checks my grammar, tone, and the quality of my phrasing. That alone dramatically increases quality and means I don’t have to learn certain phrases by heart or ask a native speaker to look over what I’ve written.”
Copilot serves as an assistant that strives to live up to one of the company’s core values: to achieve that personal touch. “The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has opened up new opportunities for Van Lanschot Kempen investigating and implementing multiple Microsoft GenAI capabilities across their digital platforms: “When we heard about the Copilot early access program, we thought: ‘We want in’,” Rapati recalls”. This will surely help Van Lanschot Kempen continue to provide personal consulting services and financial securities to generations of clients to come.
“Copilot is the first solution that eases the burden of day-to-day tasks, freeing up time to work on a more personal level but without being yet another complex tool.”
Bas Rapati, Chief Analytics Officer [and Managing Director Digital and Advanced Analytics], Van Lanschot Kempen
Follow Microsoft